Jump to content

Menu

Shelsi

Members
  • Posts

    424
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation

45 Excellent

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Not Telling
  1. I'm wondering how you do it? This year and last we've done MCT and WWE. We're doing Paragraph Town and we're on WWE 3. My writing averse ds has suddenly requested more writing. I was planning on using IEW next year so I had him take a look at it and he wants to start now. Any tips for combining the two? I honestly feel that what he's learned in Paragraph Town is what's given him that "light bulb" moment when it comes to writing. So I don't want to completely drop the writing from MCT (we do the Paragraph Town labs plus he does all the writing assignments in Caesar's English although we're going through very slowly).
  2. Oh man, I FINALLY can see how the heck to read that sentence! Thanks! It was not making any sense in my brain whatsoever. I still think it's an awkward sentence though.
  3. That's from WWE 3 and it's one of the dictation sentences. I can't even really figure out how to say that 2nd sentence. I thought maybe it was a typo but did not find it listed on the corrections page.
  4. I know there's no one out there who can tell me what will work for sure but I'd love to hear suggestions or any helpful advice! Ds is 9 years old, 4th grade, a bit ahead in most areas except writing. We started WWE last year, starting with WWE level 1. We're now up to the beginning of WWE level 3. We also did MCT's Sentence Island last year but did not physically do any of the writing (we discussed instead) and this year he's doing Paragraph Town and doing really well. He likes WWE even though up until maybe 6 weeks ago he always said how much he hates writing. He's hated writing since he was a toddler. However lately he's had more short writing assignments from Cesar's English and Paragraph Town and he's done quite well, no tears, very little frustration. I'm pretty proud of the sudden progress. Generally: - He does not like creative writing at all. - He does well with DVD courses so that's partly why I thought IEW might work for him. - Tonight he announced school was too easy and he wanted more & harder writing (my jaw is still on the floor lol) - He gets overwhelmed easy. If I force him to only think about 1 sentence at a time he can write a beautiful paragraph. If I were to just give him the assignment in it's entirety he would panic, cry, and storm off saying it's awful and he hates school. Later he would recover, come back, and write the same beautiful paragraph. So what do you think? I thought that between WWE, Caesar's English, and Paragraph Town that we were doing great this year. But now he's asking for more and I'm certainly not going to ignore that...
  5. No the first time he was doing his quiz around the corner at the school desk while I was working on stuff with dd. He suddenly popped his around the corner and started explaining randomly that he just dropped something and that's why he was up; he was just super guilty sounding. So I went over there, noticed I'd left the TM on our other desk (not something I ordinarily do btw, it was just an oversight), and asked him which ones he'd cheated on. He fessed up right away. Crumpling up his work and making him re-do it did not cause him any humiliation. But it did shock him which is exactly what I was going for. Obviously it didn't shock him enough. Dh & I talked last night and decided the ipod is gone forever because we've had tons of issues with ds & the ipod and ds had been told that one more "trust buster" with the ipod would result in permanent removal. He also has to re-do his math lesson to show us he actually does know how to do it on his own without a calculator. Dh also had him call father in law last night and ask him what happens to his students he finds cheating. Ds does not embarrass or humiliate easily (at all? I've never once seen him embarrassed over anything?) so ds was not embarrassed or ashamed to ask FIL. He just had a matter of fact convo with him, then explained why he was asking the question, and then FIL talked to him some more about it. FIL & MIL are really fair gentle people - I know they didn't shame him or anything.
  6. Yes we do this and often. I've been doing it for years ever since I noticed that ds would not try something unless he could do it with 100% perfection. He quits anything he may fail at. Frankly, I haven't seen any improvement in all my years of trying to help him with this. Sometimes I think it's classic nurture vs nature and in this case it's "nature." He didn't walk until almost 18 mos old even though it was obvious he had the motor skills and balance long before then. Sure enough, when he walked he did it perfectly without ever falling for the most part. I could give a million more examples like this. I model failing, we talk about how we actually learn more from mistakes, we talk about how sad it would be to not try new things just because of a fear of failure, and so on. I am totally open to ideas on that front. As for the cheating & today's incident there's no chance that he won't be punished. Maybe it's because my inlaws are professors and we hear stories about students they've had who have cheated, who are then kicked out of school and basically not allowed in another college for a minimum of 5 years. I'm actually a pretty laid back parent, I take A LOT in stride, let them get away with stuff, but I do take a hard line when it comes to 3 things and cheating is one of them. And the kids know this.
  7. Well, dh came home and ds was telling him right away. You know what he was saying? "I am so mad I got caught!" sob sob sob. No remorse, no sense of guilt over cheating, only feeling angry that he was caught. Dh and I are going to talk about it tonight to figure out a fair punishment. At this point I'm concerned that he's only upset he was caught. He's also taken the stance that he was not cheating, he was just checking his work. He 100% for sure knows that if he wants to use a calculator he has to ask me first. Oh and he keeps telling dh, "I was just resting my hands under the table! I wasn't trying to hide it!" So we've added lying to the cheating. Thanks so much for the helpful ideas and thoughts. It helps to hear how others would handle the situation. I'll see if I can figure out how to lock his ipod. It's an old one but certainly there's something there I can do. He may not be getting it back though as we've had trust issues with the ipod in the past (using it to surf youtube when specifically told not to, playing it when he wasn't supposed to).
  8. Yes, he probably is bored with it. It's MUS for math and I try to convince him to move on to the next lesson if he knows the material but he refuses and does all the worksheets in each lesson. Why? Because he doesn't want to have to sit there and learn something new. I have a really hard time dealing with this thought process because I am not driven that way at all - I purposely seek out challenges whereas he (and my dh) purposely seek out the path of least resistance. We are generally all together with schooling but he has ADHD so when dd & I are doing her school we can't be anywhere near him or he'll just stare at us and try to join in, answer for her, etc. Up until today I was encouraging his ipod use during math. He would put on his headphones and listen to music to drown out distractions and it helped quite a bit. Now I'm not sure what we're going to do.
  9. I caught ds, 9, cheating about 2 weeks ago on a vocabulary quiz. He was around the corner, my teacher's manual was over there, and he peeked at the answers. When he handed in his quiz, I looked it over, crumpled it up, threw it away, and had him take the last 2 quizzes over again. We had a serious talk about cheating, dh talked to him about cheating, etc. I just came into the kitchen to see him working on his math with his hands under the table. I told him to give it to me and sure enough he was using the calculator on his ipod. Needless to say the ipod is gone of course. Thoughts on punishment? This is not stuff he doesn't know/understand how to do. I'm pretty sure it's 2-fold: 1) he can't STAND to get anything wrong, ever. Whether it's school work or just random facts he likes to have in his head. He stresses about wrong answers even though we've never made a big deal about wrong answers, we don't even do grades, and we just go over wrong answers together and correct them. 2) he doesn't want to do work. He's a "do as little as possible to squeak by" kind of kid unfortunately which happened to be my dh's academic personality when he was a kid as well (and maybe it shows in certain areas as an adult but that's another topic!). I'm thinking of having him re-do the last week of math over the weekend, and until he does he won't be allowed electronics. Too harsh? Not enough? I'm trying to keep the consequences tied to the cheating as much as possible.
  10. I have a B&W laser printer (love it!) but now I need something printed in color. Where's the cheapest? I called Office Depot and it's $0.59/side. Ugh! I've got over 200 pages to do. Anything online? I'm not in a huge rush, I don't mind ordering online and waiting for it to arrive.
  11. They prob live on a farm. Anyways, yes, I would feel ok leaving them in the car based on 2 main things: 1) the area the car is in and 2) how long you think you'll be gone. I think anything over 30 mins would make my ds uncomfortable (he's 9) and me a bit uncomfortable. I do leave my 9 & 6 yr olds alone in the car for quick run-ins (like 2 mins to pay for gas) and I would leave my 9 yr old longer except my 6 yr old is pretty much always with us and I don't think it's right to expect my ds to be responsible for her.
  12. Probably a silly question but is a spelling notebook just a place where a student writes their lists of words? I hear curriculums and people talk about keeping a spelling notebook and I always wonder if there's more to it or what? FTR, I use LOE with my 4th grader for spelling & I'm wondering if we should be doing something we're not.
  13. Ok but how does (x+dx)^4 become x^4 + 4x^3dx + 6x^2(dx)^2 + 4x(dx)^3 +(dx)^4 for example? Or is that still FOIL? (I do remember FOIL! thank heavens). Sometimes I wish my ds was older as then I would have re-learned all this slowly with him. I was actually a math major in college but I seem to have brain dumped it all a long time ago.
  14. I'm re-teaching myself calculus which I haven't done in 13 years (eek!). I'm working my way through Calculus Made Easy and while I'm relieved I still understand the basic concepts I have realized I have forgotten much of the basic math. How do you expand out an equation such as: (x + dx)^4 or to the 3rd or any power. I can't remember and while I can see the rule in the book on how to expand it based on their examples, I don't remember the why, kwim? I am also working through Khan academy but I don't learn from watching things as well as from reading & I haven't yet found the video on expanding this sort of equation with exponents. Help?
  15. Thanks, that's what I was wondering, what exactly they even look like. My ds's favorite subject is history because he likes BCP so much so maybe I just need to make that my 1 time involved curriculum and make sure the others are easier.
×
×
  • Create New...